Saturday, June 29, 2013

The lady pictured here contacted me and asked if I would be interested in painting a portrait of her pregnant, and I thought, “What a great idea!” And she was able to provide me with such wonderful photos of her with dramatic rim lighting. When painting her face, I used a popular painter’s device of juxtaposing a vibrant peach/orange against a cool purple/blue. These are basically complementary colors, and I think this is my most successful use of this combination thus far!

Saturday, June 22, 2013

I am finally starting to break away from that intense blue and move on to explore other vibrant color combinations. But if you’ll notice, Lime Kiss still has a little of it in the upper left hand corner. I just couldn’t drop it altogether, although it may look like an afterthought if Lime Kiss is viewed out of context with my other recent fruit and veg still lifes.

I paint these little compositions to please myself; so, I enjoy pushing boundaries with color and composition. Artichoke Heart’s composition bleeds off the edge, and I used an exciting purple in the darkest shadows even though I didn’t necessarily see it in my subject. I’m not certain that I’ll crop my subject like that again (maybe if it were a less complex shape), but I do love the purple! I want to try limes on that yellow orange again, but with a light purple blue back drop instead of robin’s egg blue. And next time, I’m going to shoot for a better contrast in the shadows; although, I still do like my subtle value pattern in Lime Kiss.